Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Not only that, but using a vote-based system to "grade" authors is ripe for manipulation through aggressive paid marketing, benefiting those with the deepest pockets the most...
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Not if there's a maximum amount payable for each book/writer/year.
Basically, readers pay a monthly fee, proportional to their income.
A sort of Publisher Guild And Writers Society collects it and use the money to produce books and to pay writers.
Readers get books for free from known servers.
Shoppers and printers got books from that same source, and pay an extra fee for each hardcopy they make.
Buyers pay a cover price for hardcopies (it's the extra amount nedeed for pay everyone who worked to that copy, from the cover designer to the guy who cleans the shop at night).
Readers give a feedback on what they read.
Writers get paid periodically according to the number of copies sold / printed / downloaded and the feedback received, until a maximum (say 1.250.000$/year)
Side effect: writers got paid most for what is read, not for what is downloaded. As of now, if a book sells millions of copies its author gets rich even if nobody reads it. And that's definitely unfair.
Intellectual Property and copyright (which lasts a fixed amount of time from first publication or life +1 year, you choose) belongs to the writer and not to some greedy corporation.
The question is: why a writer who get to the maximum will write some more?
My answer is: please, stop writing.
If the only incentive for a writer is money, I can live without her/him.
I think that it's more likely for a Rowling to go there, rather than for a Toni Morrison.
And if we end up with less HP and more Nobel Prize novels (paid with the exceeding from HP), I hardly call it a loss.
The other question is: if you can have a legal multiformat e-book without paying for it, why do you need to pirate it?
And better, if you scanned and OCR'd a book, provided you did a good job, you can put it in the legal circuit and get a discount on your fee. You're no longer a pirate, your good job (and pirate's job is usually good) is rewarded, and writers got paid.
Of course in the real world it won't work.
For two reasons: now publisher decide what readers read. They do it with commercials and by choosing what to print and when. They won't give up on that kind of power.
Greedy writers/publishers/corporations won't agree on a maximum earning. Greedy pirate readers won't agree on a minimum fixed payment. Basically, everybody just want it all. And now.
So in the end, it's the same old story: the strongest rule. And he's always right.